A Daughter of To-Day eBook

“I had to come after you,” he said; “I’ve
let you carry off my stick.”

She looked at him in mischievous challenge of his
subterfuge, and he added frankly, with a voice that
shook a little notwithstanding—­

“It’s of no use—­I find I must
accept your compromise. It is very good of you
to be willing to make one. And I can’t
let you go altogether, Elfrida.”

She gave him a happy smile. “And now,”
she said, “shall we talk of something else?”

CHAPTER XXIX.

March brought John Kendal back to town with a few
Devonshire studies and a kindling discontent with
the three subjects he had in hand for the May exhibitions.
It spread over everything he had done for the last
six months when he found himself alone with his canvases
and whole-hearted toward them. He recognized
that he had been dividing his interest, that his ambition
had suffered, that his hand did not leap as it had
before at the suggestion of some lyric or dramatic
possibility of color. He even fancied that his
drawing, which was his vulnerable point, had worsened.
He worked strenuously for days without satisfying
himself that he had recovered ground appreciably,
and then came desperately to the conclusion that he
wanted the stimulus of a new idea, a subject altogether
disassociated with anything he had done. It was
only, he felt, when his spirit was wholly in bondage
to the charm of his work that he could do it well,
and he needed to be bound afresh. Literally,
he told himself, the only thing he had painted in
months that pleased him was that mere sketch, from
memory, of the Halifax drawing-room episode.
He dragged it out and looked at it, under its damaging
red stripes, with enthusiasm. Whatever she did
with herself, he thought, Elfrida Bell was curiously
satisfying from an artistic point of view. He
fell into a train of meditation, which quickened presently
into a practical idea that set him striding up and
down the room.

“I believe she would be delighted!” he
said aloud, coming to a sudden standstill; “and,
by Jove, it would be a kind of reparation!”

He delved into an abysmal cupboard for a crusted pen
and a cobwebby bottle of ink, and was presently sitting
among the fragments of three notes addressed, one
after the other, to “Dear Miss Bell.”
In the end he wrote a single line without any formality
whatever, and when Elfrida opened it an hour later
she read:

“Will you let me paint your portrait
for the Academy?

“JOHN-KENDAL.

“P.S.—­Or any other exhibition
you may prefer.”

The last line was a stroke of policy. “She
abhors Burlington House,” he had reflected.

The answer came next day, and he tore it open with
rapid fingers. “I can’t think why—­but
if you wish it, yes. But why not for the Academy,
since you are disposed to do me that honor?”

“Characteristic,” thought Kendal grimly,
as he tore up the note. “She can’t
think why. But I’m glad the Academy doesn’t
stick in her pretty throat—­I was afraid
it would. It’s the potent influence of
the Private View.”